The need to understand the bigger picture

The author is currently visiting a close friend, who was going through a challenging situation lately. We spoke about the situation, and he then went on to explain that he does not understand why this happened to him.

The situation itself is not important for this article. However, what is important is how we constantly have the need to comprehend things. We want things to 'make sense' to us. Is this not true? When something happens, we can allow ourselves to go into endless contemplation on why this, why that, why so and why not differently. Has this ever happened to anyone

We overthink things, and then we sometimes come to the conclusion that we are simply a 'victim' of circumstances, or sometimes we consider ourselves just to be 'lucky', after contemplating and not getting a solid answer to our question.

It is not what it seems to be

One thing we can be sure of, is that there is always a 'bigger picture' to life, to what is happening. We tend to see only what is happening here, through a limited, personal perception, but we mostly fail to see a bigger picture. We experience something and immediately label it, according to our conditioned minds. Then, we believe this label to be solid and true and tend to believe only this perspective of the situation. 

Has anything happened to any of us where we felt that it was 'bad luck' or 'unfortunate' at that specific point, but later something else happens following the 'bad' scenario, and then we go like "Ah, that is why it happened!"  

Sounds familiar? Maybe, or maybe not, but we may have thought at some point or another that there is a 'bigger reason' existing for whatever happens.

We tend to see life in intervals of small 'happenings', while life is actually one big 'happening'. We want to individualize events, while actually Life itself is the whole, one, single event!

So, back to the friend asking this question, 'why?' Well, the author suggested that he considers the following, and maybe it can be relevant to the readers too. We ask 'why' and we want to understand why it happened like this, what is the reason for this or that...

Now, imagine we actually have an answer to this specific question. We get an answer, and we may be happy for a while. Then we start to contemplate that too. We understand why one thing happened, but now we want to understand why the next thing happened! And, imagine we got that answer... we may be happy for a while until we start to contemplate again, and you can imagine what that leads to. Another 'why?' and another 'why?' 

"But why this, but why that" and so it goes on and on.

For now, we are not saying it is not good to question things. There is absolutely no problem with wanting to have deeper understandings of life, but we need to be able to distinguish what is actually questionable and what not.

Mentally, we want to understand 'what' caused something and 'why'. That is how the mind works. Always wanting to understand, always wanting things to make sense. Logic. Always wanting to understand life in terms of the mental conditioning of the mind, wanting everything we experience to be placed into boxes of understanding, boxes of rationalization. Labeling. Always wanting things to make sense, why this and why that.

A shift in perception

Actually, as soon as we start to put things into mental 'frames', our experience of it becomes limited. When we do this, our understanding is bound to our mental capacity. When we just accept things for what they are, we can experience the 'full' picture, so to say. Look at the image below to see an illustration of this. When we put things into mental 'frames', it gives us a very limited picture.

So now, does it not seem to be clear that this need to 'understand' can actually just lead to more questions and more confusion, and we may never be able to understand things. Contemplating too much on why things happen will only steal away our precious presence. It prevents us from living in the here and now. It is highly unlikely that things will make sense to us through rational thinking, because it was due to our rational thinking and understanding that brought us to 'not' understanding in the first place, seeing that something happened that does not fit our way of thinking.

So, how do we pacify this? How do we deal with this? Well, if it is really necessary, one can, of course, meditate on something for some clarity to come, but again, we should not be too caught up in the past, in memory, in mind. When we do not understand something that we feel really has some deeper relevance and we feel it is of utmost importance to know, we may also refer to our spiritual teachers or gurus, as they may have some wisdom to share with us. It is normal to think, to 'wonder' about things, and we should not be discouraged to identify patterns repeating themselves in life, as this could bring powerful insights or understandings to us. Through being aware, living in the present, and living mindfully, we can actually understand a lot of what is happening in each moment, without the need to overthink anything. With clear minds, we also understand clearly.

In the end, the answer to our demand to understand is actually quite simple. Whenever this desire to 'want to make sense' of something comes up, we answer it with a simple question. We ask; Who exactly wants to know? or Who is asking?

We check up on where this question comes from and if there is any real 'I' existing that is asking the question, then we may want to consider that our obstacle to understanding lies exactly there!

An illustration of seeing the 'bigger picture'.
Photo taken in March 2020 in Lavaur, France.